The invention relates generally to the field of water treatment, and more particularly to mobile water demineralization apparatus.
Standard municipal water supplies typically contain various impurities in small concentrations, such as silica, chlorine, calcium and magnesium. However, many industries require large amounts of water of a higher degree of purity, for example, in boilers to prevent scale and corrosion and in chemical processes to insure process integrity. Often these industries have large onsite installations for water purification. A sampling of industries which regularly use high quality water in large quantities includes electric utilities, especially nuclear power plants, steamships, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coastguard, Laboratories, electronics manufacturers, and breweries.
Mobile demineralization units have the advantage that they can provide pure water at any location without requiring the user to make a permanent investment in this type of facility. In addition, the mobile demineralizer is available on an emergency basis when standard equipment fails or is unavailable or inadequate. For example, a particularly advantageous application of mobile demineralizers is providing pure water to steamships at the dock. One drawback of mobile demineralizing units, of course, is that they are limited in the quantity of demineralizing resin that can be carried. One such system previously used a one-pass system through demineralizers in a van but the quality of the water produced was inadequate for many applications. Another type of mobile system previously in use passed water through a large filtration tank. However, the purification operation had to be interrupted periodically to allow the van to return to its home base to replenish the exhausted demineralizing resin.